A: How similar men and women were as far as their wants and needs, but how disconnected they were from actually talking about it. One data point that really jumps out at me, I think it’s 94 percent of men wanted more variety in their relationship sexually, and it was 78 percent of women who wanted variety, too. And if you look at the happiest couples, the extremely happy, they have a lot of variety. They get it. Here is everybody else wanting more variety, but they don’t talk about it. They’re afraid to talk to their partner about it.

Another interesting thing, men wanted romance more than the women did. And pet names — that was a fascinating piece of the survey, too. It was a really strong data point for the extremely happy couples, using pet names — Honey, Babe, whatever — with their partners. I never really thought about that. Pepper never really thought about it, either. But it made a big difference.

Q: One that jumped out at me was when you gave people a list of things they could have, and more people chose having unlimited money over having perfect health.

A: I was so surprised by that one, people picking money over health. And then in turn, when you ask people what causes them the most stress in their relationships, some of them say financial issues. People think money solves all the problems, and it’s not the case. It doesn’t create happiness.

Q: Were there results that contradicted what other studies have shown?

A: One for sure. With the extremely happy couples, it was frequency of sex: three or four times a week. Pepper thought that was a little bit higher than numbers she had seen in the past. But those are the numbers we came up with.

Q: Why did you want this survey to be global?

A: I didn’t want to just keep it to the United States. You hear about these really romantic countries like Italy and Spain and France, so what are the people there doing? I wanted to see what we could learn from each other. In today’s society, everybody is doing things a little bit different and everybody has a unique normal and so OK, who’s doing what, and who’s doing it right?

Q: This book has been featured in national newspapers and on network TV shows. Why do you think it’s attracting so much attention?

A: People want to know what other people are doing. Look at Facebook. People are very curious about what other people are doing. “The Normal Bar” says here is what they’re doing. We don’t say you have to be normal. We’re saying this is what it looks like, and you kind of decide what works for you.

You can go 14 or 15 years in a relationship and think you know what your partner wants and needs out of you and out of life, and you really don’t unless you sit down and really talk about it. That’s what this book is really all about.

“The Normal Bar: The Surprising Secrets of Happy Couples and What They Reveal About Creating a New Normal in Your Relationship,” by Chrisanna Northrup, Pepper Schwartz, and James Witte, Harmony Books, 304 pages, $25.